Speaking Of Unreal Tournament 3…

Those lucky sons of guns over at Firing Squad and Beyond Unreal got some hands-on time with UT3 at Epic’s offices and liked what they saw. From BU’s coverage:

I do just want to mention the streaming level technology. The way it works in-game so far is this: once the level ends, the scoreboard is shown first over the top of the ending level and then over the top of a black screen, which lasts for just a few seconds. The new level then appears and you are frozen in your spawning point (though you can move your view around) with a small message at the bottom of the screen proclaiming “waiting for other players”. Once everyone is connected, the game starts seamlessly.
So the bottom line is that the game is shaping up much as we’ve heard it would be. Gone are many of the annoyances of the previous game, returning are many of the things for which people praised Unreal Tournament. It’s quite fun to play, it looks amazing, and I’m looking forward to spending some more time with it in the future, testing out Warfare and the core gametypes.

Firing Squad’s piece is available right here. Sweet.